summoner upkeep

[lyrith]

As a new member of the site, and one that decided too go with a summoner, the upkeep for summoner's summons has recently been bugging me. At level 1 the mana upkeep for summoners is 20% per turn. While it does lower too 5% per post at level 20 it is still ridiculously high. The point of being a summoner is too use your summon, a lot. With the current mana upkeep, a summoner would never be able too make it though a whole raid battle, let alone a larger raid boss. Even if they were able too make it through a raid battle, they would have to wait a long time in able to move on too the next. Speaking of waiting, I was unable too find the rate at which mana recharges, even when asking the c-box.

Because summoners are supposed too be focused on their summons, I would like too suggest removing the upkeep and simply capping the amount of summons a summoner can have out at once. The number could start out at one or two and increase by one whenever they can reach a new tier but higher tier monsters count as one extra monster for every tier past one they are. For example: a level 35 summoner can summon either three tier one summons. Or one tier one and one tier two. The system would limit summoners enough too keep them balanced but would make them more playable, and even let the summons themselves be around enough that they could become characters themselves, leading too more interesting rp interactions and stories.




MP Upkeep (Unlimited amount of summons as long as you can pay the MP)

The current system. See this.
People can summon as many summons and have them available as long as they can pay the MP.
Flexible RP-wise but expensive in terms of actual game mechanics.


Slot Limit (No upkeep, limit summons by a set amount per tier)

The proposed system above in this post.
A Summoner is limited to a certain amount of Summons each tier. A single strong summon or a bunch of weaker summons can be selectable.
Simple but slightly less flexible. 


Hybrid Slot Limit (Each tier has a set number of points, monsters take up variable amounts)

A system where each tier has a set amount of "Summon Points" available. Let's say a Tier I Summoner has 5 max Summon Points.
A golem may cost 3 SP while a slime can cost 1 SP. This allows you to summon maximum amounts like 1 Golem + 2 Slimes, 5 Slimes, etc.
Simple math but may result in zerg war-like strategies.


Other

If someone posts an idea in this thread that you want, you should Like their post. It lets the mods know which ideas are favored.

[Murasaki]

Let me make this a poll to see general members' thoughts before I consider modifying things. Please share this page with everyone.

[Haneroze]

Here's the impression I got from Canon, all from end-game (level ~90)

-With the passive regeneration rate, it takes many hours to heal from 0% to 100% MP. Players often need to take looong breaks before and after Raid Boss battles, so that everyone gets their MP fully healed.

-MP potions are also very slow. They surely have a long cooldown, while still not healing -that- much. It certainly helps to recover MP faster, but then again, maybe the best potions are actually rare or expansive.

-A Raid boss battle can last over 30 minutes. If the Summoner tries to preserve his MP, he may end the battle with ~25% remaining MP. But since he needs to rely solely on spells, he has to keep spending a lot of MP on top of his summons, and so may need an Enchanter so that he can go full power without worrying about his MP.

-A Summoner ends up with close to 13000 MP end-game.


From this, I'd say the following, considering a post averages at 5 seconds:
-If a summoner fights by preserving his mana, he'd spend 0.2% MP per post (27 MP)
-If he fights full power, it may come closer to 0.5% MP per post (68 MP)
-The Mana regeneration rate is of 0.03% per post (4MP)

Values seem kinda low however. There's most likely other factors, or I haven't interpreted something correctly. And since in the RP forum, we wouldn't make a boss battle last that long (that'd be 720 posts by everyone!), we can easily suppose it should be more expansive.


Here would be my proposition:

-A summoner that preserves MP would spend around 100 MP per post (~0.7%)
-A summoner that fights at full power would spend around 250 MP per post (~1.9%)
-The MP regeneration rate is of 20 MP per post, if out of battle. No matter the level.

For summon upkeeps? Regardless of level...
-Tier 1 summons would cost 20 MP per post (10% at level 1, 0.15% at level 90)
-Tier 2 summons would cost 50 MP per post (1.1% at level 31, 0.38% at level 90)
-Tier 3 summons would cost 150 MP per post (1.7% at level 61, 1.15% at level 90)

And on top of them, you also have to add Spell costs, of course!


=====================================


If we choose to go by slots instead of by MP upkeep, we could inspire ourselves from Dofus and Wakfu. The basic idea is that each character gets one Summon slot, but Summon-based Classes also get a skill or a Passive to increase their slots, and the rest needs to be gotten from Equipments. What we could have here is:

-A summoner starts with 1 CP (Command Point)
-Each 30 levels, he gains a new CP
-At level 30, the Summoner could learn a skill to increase temporarily his CP between 1 and 3, depending on his level.
-CP can be gained through equipment reforges. Let's say, up to 2 CP can be gained that way.

-A tier 1 summon costs 1 CP
-A tier 2 summon costs 2 CP
-A tier 3 summon costs 3 CP
-A tier 4 summon requires 6 CP, and will then take away all the remaining slots.

[Spades]

The system itself is a solid idea but of course I have concerns. As a monk I have to close the distance by foot but while doing this the summoner is question can still back up or turn and run while still summoning the max amount for each tier. So if I charge at full sprint without a skill he can respond in kind and turn and run the opposite way while summoning 10 tier one monsters 6 tier twos and even 2 tier threes in my way by clearing this distance, and at no point have I come across there being a rule that forced a caster to be standing still so I'm going to assume this as such. When fighting a ranged class this can still be a problem since he can summon a tier four to do the offensive but pull up a tier one as a human shield for each fireball or even a lightning strike if they decide to make the summons that fast. I just hope there is a system to be added to this that decreases the amount of max summons if used in quick succession.

[Haneroze]

Valid concern. It's also a problem in Dofus, but except for full-summon builds at low level, it sort of averages itself throughout the game. It sort of ends up like that:

-Each summon have a cooldown. The weakest ones can be cast every 1 to 3 turns, whereas the best ones can only be cast each 5 to 8 turns (and that's quite long in a tactical MMORPG). Because of the cooldown, they have to vary the types of summon.
-Only 3 summons out of the 7 (for THE summoner class) actually try to block the path. One of these pushes the opponent, sometimes toward yourself, so most summoners don't summon it. In the two others, the weakest can die in 1-2 hits, the strongest in 3-4 hits (and has a long cooldown)
-The others stay out of the way, and can easily be killed in 1 or 2 attacks.
-They're annoying to your teammates by blocking all the lines of sight. So even your Teammates sometimes participate in killing your own summons.

In Wakfu, there's also limitation in that, if you're a full Summoner, you will have 5 Summonable creatures, but if one dies, you can't summon it again until the battle ends.


What rules could we add here to prevent the full-summon coward situation? Let's say:
-Summoning causes a global cooldown on all summons of their tier. Manually recalling that summon resets the cooldown except for the recalled summon.
-If 1-3 or more of the same summon dies (depending on tier), the summoner will not be able to summon it anymore for 24 hours.
-Most summons will not willingly protect the summoner anyway.

[Spades]

I like your idea's Haneroze but My thought was someone summons phoenix let's say that's tier 4. Now a slime a tier 1 monster may be summoned, mind you this is from watching the cbox and reading this thread, now Monk's they hit multiple times in a single turn so it may not be a concern as much but what about the hit one time and be done with it classes. If an assassin goes in for a one hit kill or even any type of CC instantly summon the tier one and chances are it may not move out the way considering it's low tier, that's one hit taken and a large window of time given to the fast summoner for hitting a "oh shit" button in higher level play. As experienced players we know what happens if we have our best skill or worse yet best combo available when the squishes used all their pew pew and have no escape for multiple pew pews in return, I just wish there is some type of buffer time for the summon itself, like summoning a tier one monster takes 2-3 seconds for it to actually be counted as a summoned being after it has been summoned and so on and so forth. This would force the summoner in question to attempt to pre-plan instead of summon a defensive wall and follow up with a big hitter or some type of CC monster

[lyrith]

Actually, summoning tier 1 summons take 2 seconds, tier 2s take 3, tier 3s take 4, and tier 4s take 5

[Nursery Rhyme]

>>Because summoners are supposed too be focused on their summons, I would like too suggest removing the upkeep and simply capping the amount of summons a summoner can have out at once. The number could start out at one or two and increase by one whenever they can reach a new tier but higher tier monsters count as one extra monster for every tier past one they are.

Getting rid of the upkeep I can get behind but I take issue with this. In my mind there are two archetypes to summoner that all others branch from:

1) The Lots of Doods theory (Diablo 2 necromancer)

2) The 'big guy' theory (FF Summoners and such)

Your suggestion would minimize player choice too much in how they choose to 'rp' their builds. I'm sure there's a compromise, but as it stands my vote goes toward the mp model due it promoting more diversity. I think the mp model is currently overly harsh on lower level summoners however and could afford to be a bit more lax (even if stats are abstract in our rp).


As for this: >> and even let the summons themselves be around enough that they could become characters themselves, leading too more interesting rp interactions and stories.

I'm not sure summons should be sentient, maybe someone with a better grasp of canon (i've only seen the first season so far, haven't read the novels either) can answer for me on that count, but if summons are sentient above the level of say a an animal or a pokemon (even that itself might raise some questions), then the class' actual name would be Slaver. Lol.


Either way, I think these are things that all summoners probably need to be on the same page with, so I applaud you for bringing it up.


Edit: I'm also not sure how to actually vote on this thing so I haven't, haha.

Edit2: Nevermind I think I got it to work.

[Haneroze]

Jan 15, 2015 23:25:40 GMT Nursery Rhyme said:

I'm not sure summons should be sentient, maybe someone with a better grasp of canon (i've only seen the first season so far, haven't read the novels either) can answer for me on that count, but if summons are sentient above the level of say a an animal or a pokemon (even that itself might raise some questions), then the class' actual name would be Slaver. Lol.

Not necessarily. A summon is made through a contract of some sort: it accepts to fight for you. However, it also means that it can decide not to fight for you if you mistreat them. For example, if you only summon Golems in order to block incoming projectiles, Golems will not only leave the fight by its own will, but will also not respond anymore to further summon. They want to live another day, after all. This was something that was brought up a long while ago as a certain person wanted to make a summoner that mistreats his summons.

Of course, not all summons have the same level of sentience. Undine are far more likely to enjoy accompanying a summoner, whereas skeletons will just see no enemy and leave.